This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Times of India
9-28-10
NEW DELHI: Should Britain remain the pre-eminent nation in the Commonwealth when the world order has been turned upside down from the days when the "sun never set on the British Empire"? With controversy raging over who will declare CWG-2010 open -- representative of Queen Elizabeth or President Pratibha Patil -- the question has come to the fore with shades of the old debate over equations between the colonial master and the colonised resurfacing.
The verdict of historian
Source: London Evening Standard
9-27-10
Next month sees the publication of Orlando Figes's history of the Crimean war, Crimea: The Last Crusade. According to the blurb for his new book, Figes “re-imagines the extraordinary war, in which the stakes could not have been higher and which was fought with a terrible mixture of ferocity and incompetence”.
It is ferocity and incompetence that have characterised Figes's own extraordinary war with academics, and dominated the headlines earlier this year. The stakes could not have b
Source: Irish Times
9-4-10
ALF O'BRIEN: ALF O’BRIEN, who has died aged 72, was a lecturer in the department of medieval history in University College Cork, a dedicated socialist and a leading authority on the life and times of medieval Ireland.
He had a particular interest in the growth of commercial relations between Ireland and the rest of Europe between the 11th and mid-16th centuries, a period when the “merchant prince” families of busy ports like Cork, Galway, Waterford, Dublin and other maritime cities
Source: NY Daily News
9-28-10
Exactly 234 years ago this month, a Revolutionary War general died from wounds incurred during a defiant showdown with the British - a gripping tale of patriotism that began in Queens.
But the spot where Nathaniel Woodhull was mortally wounded in 1776 does not bear tribute to the first high-ranking colonial officer to become a prisoner of war and die in enemy captivity.
"It needs to be preserved as a reminder of his sacrifice," said John Mauk Hilliard, preside
Source: David Walsh for the HNN
9-28-10
David Walsh is assistant editor of the History News Network.Plans to designate the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa as part of the National Park System received a boost last Thursday when Oklahoma Republican John Sullivan introduced a bill to conduct a feasibility study on incorporating the park into the NPS. The park commemorates the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and is named for Tulsa native John Hope Franklin, the late Duke historian and Presidential Medal of Honor winner. Dignitaries will assemble on October 27 to dedicate the park in his honor.The park is sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007. The 2008 groundbreaking for the park was Dr. Franklin’s last public appearance. In keeping with the theme of reconciliation, the park is intended to foster an inclusive narrative of Oklahoma’s history, one that incorporates the valuable role African Americans played in the building of the modern state.
Source: NYT
9-27-10
...Raphael Haim Golb, a 50-year-old real estate lawyer, seemed at times to take on the role of everything but criminal defendant as he testified in his own defense on Monday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Mr. Golb faces charges that he stole the identity of and impersonated a New York University professor and others who disagreed with his father’s theories about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls in an effort to discredit them.
Mr. Golb spent much of his nearly th
Source: Huffington Post
9-28-10
What follows are questions for Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren from Coach Kemper and IFE Journalism Interns1. Q: As a historian and author, what 3 books would you recommend to high school students who wish to gain a better understanding of the world and the middle east in particular?A: I would highly recommend The Siege, by Conor Cruise O'Brien; David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace; and Fouad Ajami's The Arab Predicament, on Arab politic
Source: Nigerian Tribune
9-28-10
NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has lamented the failure of Nigeria to manifest traits of a succeeding nation 50 years into independence.
Speaking as guest speaker at the 50th Independence anniversary of Nigeria, organised by the Rivers State government in Port Harcourt on Monday, Professor Soyinka noted that the Nigerian nation had not been able to find the link between potential and fulfilment.
The Nobel Laureate, who spoke alongside other world-renowned schol
Source: NYT
9-27-10
[David Brooks is a columnist for the NYT.]
Sometimes it’s hard to remember what good government looks like: government that disciplines itself but looks to the long term; government that inspires trust; government that promotes social mobility without busting the budget.
That kind of government existed for decades right here in California. Between 1911 and the ’60s, California had a series of governors — like Hiram Johnson, Earl Warren, Goodwin Knight and Pat Brown — wh
Source: Chicago Tribune
9-27-10
...Annette Gordon-Reed, American historian, 51; Cambridge, Mass. Gordon-Reed changed the way scholars study the life of Thomas Jefferson, revealing his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings; she continues her discoveries in colonial interracial relationships....
Source: LA Times
9-27-10
As he stood beside the ornate tomb in Seville's massive cathedral in southern Spain, Rubén Martínez didn't know whether to curse or bless the man whose bones lie there.
"It's kind of like that classic mestizo dilemma," Martínez said, using the traditional term denoting people of mixed European and indigenous American ancestry. "He's my dad. I'm a bastard kid. I hate him, I love him."...
Martínez and filmmaker Carl Byker dig deep into the origins of L
Source: Boston Globe
9-26-10
You are a runaway slave in antebellum America. Your name, age, height, and defining characteristics — whipping scars or redbone skin, jutting tooth or missing toes — have been circulated in a newspaper ad that offers $150 for your return. You’ve crossed the treacherous border states and, so far, eluded slave catchers. But you can feel their breath, and as you cross into New England, you’ve heard tell of a law giving anyone with a badge not just the power but the obligation to arrest you....
Source: Jerusalem Post
9-24-10
A Polish organization began legal action this week to convict British Holocaust denier David Irving for “minimizing” the scale of Nazi atrocities, as the revisionist historian begins his controversial tours of the Nazi death camps in the country.
The Open Republic Association Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia lodged a complaint with the Institute of National Remembrance- Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (IPN) on Wednesday claiming Irving seeks t
Source: CHE
9-26-10
Ashton W. Welch, an associate professor of history and longtime director of Creighton University's black-studies program, died unexpectedly in his sleep on August 14. He was 68; the cause of death was not specified.
Among the things left in his office were syllabus notes for the three courses he was going to teach this fall. "We all felt Ashton was the heart and soul of the department," said Elizabeth R. Elliot-Meisel, chair of history.
Mr. Welch began teachin
Source: WaPo
9-26-10
NEW YORK -- White descendants of the nation's first professionally trained African-American doctor gathered in a cemetery on Sunday to dedicate a tombstone at the unmarked grave where he was buried in 1865.
"Right now I feel so connected in a new way, to actually be here," said Antoinette Martignoni, the 91-year-old great-granddaughter of James McCune Smith. "I take a deep breath, and I thank God, I really do. I am so glad to have lived this long."
S
Source: WaPo
9-27-10
...Seoul-based historian Andrei Lankov spent the early 1990s anticipating something that hasn't happened. In his 30s at the time - "just a beginner," Lankov recalled - he felt certain that North Korea would collapse after leader Kim Il Sung's death. He planned his life around it. He craved the firsthand research that North Korea's collapse would allow. He called it his "top academic ambition" to enter the nation that operated like a vault, turning the imagined into the tactil
Source: Irish Massachusetts (Blog)
9-23-10
American historian David McCullough has been awarded the 2011 John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Award which is given out annually each March by the Holyoke St. Patrick's Day Parade committee in western Massachusetts.
The prestigious award was first bestowed on John F. Kennedy in 1958, and later named in his hono
Source: Salon
9-24-10
Jon Stewart's announcement last Thursday of his "Rally to Restore Sanity" on Oct. 30 has, not surprisingly, generated significant interest from"Daily Show" fans. (The current number of people signed up on the rally's Facebook page is 140,000). But it also prompted some confusion, even from longtime fans. What is Ste
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
9-24-10
Despite the progress made during the last century, in most places on Earth men continue to hold an overwhelming advantage. With few exceptions, when it comes to health, education, work, salaries, social status, and political power, women do not even come close to parity.
That was just one of the stark facts in play as Bryn Mawr College convened an international conference Thursday - "Heritage and Hope: Women's Education in a Global Context" - to help mark the 125th anniv
Source: AFP
9-23-10
COPENHAGEN — Many mentally handicapped Danes, including children, were lobotomised between 1947 and 1983, and many died from the operation, a historian behind a soon-to-be-published book on the topic told Danish media Thursday.
"Doctors did not count on curing them completely, but wanted to pacify them, perhaps to better their condition," Jesper Vaczy Kragh told the Christian daily Kristelig Dagbladet.
"The results of such operations generally were not go
